Fury (25 page)

He had felt happy.

And then she’d wrenched that away from him. She’d tricked him into taking a chance, and it had backfired. Which was exactly why he usually took every precaution, planned things down to the details, studied his playbook obsessively. Because the minute you lost control—or worse, gave it up—you got hurt.

It was snowing as Chase drove to the Piss Pass, and it was almost as if the cold air were freezing his thoughts, making it even harder to focus. He worried he was going crazy. He took out his phone to call Em; he’d already told her that he wasn’t going to meet her at the Football Feast, but he also hoped that hearing another person’s voice would help calm him down. No answer. His thoughts were so all over the place tonight, he couldn’t even remember what he’d said in his message.

He didn’t know why Ty wanted to meet at the Piss Pass; he didn’t know what he was going to say or how he’d explain that fundamentally she’d ruined his life. He just wanted to get this over with and to move on. Closure. That’s what he needed. Closure.

Of course, the moment he laid eyes on her, he knew being angry and conveying the depth of her betrayal wouldn’t be easy. Ty looked hauntingly beautiful in the snowy, moonlit night. It
was like there were spotlights on her eyes and strands of gold woven into her flowing red hair; her white-blond streak looked almost like it was glowing. She was wearing a long, maroon dress that blew in the wind, and she was leaning against the guardrail, looking out over the traffic below. As he got out of his car, she turned to him gratefully.

“I’m so glad you came, Chase,” she said in a low voice.

“Yeah, I came.” Chase approached her slowly. There was really only one question he wanted answered. He cleared his throat, and then, with a force he wasn’t expecting: “Why, Ty? Why did you post those things? I’ve been—I’ve been nice to you. I thought we
had
something. Why would you do that?”

“I’m a terrible person,” she said. She was strangely calm, in the way only a hysterical person can be. She didn’t blink. Her mouth was drawn in a thin line. “I am awful and totally undeserving of your love. I’m sorry.”

“You’re still not giving me a reason,” he said, clenching his fist. “I’m asking you why? What did I do to deserve this?”

“I do wish things were different, Chase,” she said in the same frighteningly even tone. “I wish we’d never met at all.”

With that, she was climbing up the rungs of the rail. It took a moment for Chase to register what she was doing. He grabbed for her shoulder but touched only air.

“Ty, stop. Get down.” Panic was winging through him. “What are you doing?”

She was on the other side of the railing now, gripping it and leaning back over the highway like she was on a trapeze. Just her toes were touching the bridge; her heels slanted down into the night air.

“This is all over, Chase.” She smiled then. It was a strange smile that Chase had never seen before.

All he could think about, suddenly, was Sasha. Up on that ledge. There had been no one behind her, no one to beg her to come back to solid ground.

“Ty, please. You’re really scaring me. Come back over here and we can talk about this. Come on.” Chase reached for her, terrified. He didn’t want to actually grab her; he worried he might push her over the edge. He tried to make his arms look as welcoming and sturdy as possible. She turned sideways, hanging on with just one hand and one foot. She was teetering slightly, as though the wind would be enough to knock her over. Chase heard a noise come out of his mouth that sounded more like a whimpering dog than a human.

“Ty,” he said desperately. He was on the verge of tears. “I’m begging you, please. It doesn’t matter what you did—I just want you to come back over here.”

“Oh, but it does matter, Chase. All our actions matter. Can’t you see that?”

In the snow and dark it was hard to see, let alone think. As Chase stood there, arms outstretched, Ty seemed to waver before
him. He blinked, trying to regain focus. And when he reopened his eyes, it wasn’t Ty hanging off the bridge. It was Sasha.

Like an old television set, the images of Sasha and Ty flickered back and forth. Chase was gripped by a fear deeper than anything he’d ever felt.
Sasha
—
Ty
—
Sasha
—
Ty
. . .

Oh god what have I done?

And then, as though he were watching a scratchy old horror film on that flashing TV, it all came flooding back.

He had kept secret tabs on her. He watched and waited, not knowing exactly what he was waiting for. Until the beginning of junior year, when the football team decided on a teamwide prank—try to get a naked picture of a chick from school, and post it to a private website, for team eyes only.

Chase picked Sasha Bowlder.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he’d never gotten over her or the feeling of being rejected, humiliated, by someone who had been his best friend.

He started wooing her online, with a fake screenname and password, hoping she’d send him what he wanted without too much trouble.

She was shy at first, but over time their online conversations grew more involved. Deeper.
Sometimes I think about how I grew up, and whether that made me stronger,
she said one afternoon.
Doesn’t it sometimes feel like everything is such a charade?
she asked another day
. Like, it’s all laid out in front of you, just waiting to be snatched away.

After a week or so, most of the other guys had forgotten about the whole prank.

But Chase didn’t forget. And he didn’t stop. It went on for weeks, and then months. In a weird way, Chase liked talking to Sasha more than anyone else. She
got
him. At certain points, he would forget it was supposed to be a joke—and that he still resented her for being such a bitch to him in seventh grade.

She felt it, too, whatever was happening between them. She let him in. Told him about her fears. Her fantasies. And the days she felt a numbness creeping in, like a fog that would swallow her whole.

And then, with little explanation, she stopped it. She announced—a week before she jumped—that she wouldn’t speak to him anymore. She said their relationship was too intense and she didn’t know what to make of it. He never wanted to see her, and she couldn’t handle the loneliness. He didn’t understand her—no one did, not really. She was tired and sick of being played. And so, she rejected him.

Again.

Chase was furious. He was blind angry—the irrational kind, the kind that got into his fingers and toes, the kind that burned. He fumbled on the field—for the first time, maybe ever. Then he went out with Zach and the guys and they were being such assholes, as usual; when he got up to grab napkins at the burger joint, they laughed and called him their servant. Chase’s anger swelled, a blackness.

He got home that night and all his bitterness swung back in Sasha’s direction.
I’m trash, huh? That’s all I am?

He was sick, too, of getting kicked and crapped on and beaten on by everybody.

He decided to kick back.

There was a clear moment, as his hand hovered above the
UPLOAD
button, when his mind screamed:
Wrong! Wrong!

But two wrongs don’t make a right. He clicked, and Sasha’s sexy messages and raw confessions all got posted to the Ascension High Facebook page.

By the time he woke up the next morning, the administration had already taken the photos down, but the damage was done. Anyone who hadn’t seen them the night before had heard about them, had seen screenshots. When Sasha came to school the next morning, it was like she was an animal in a cage. Stared at, mimicked, mocked. It was her worst nightmare, and Chase knew it.

Because it was his worst nightmare too.

Standing on the Piss Pass, Chase retched. He couldn’t believe what he’d done, how stupid he’d been. He hadn’t understood what he was messing with.

How it would all come back around.

It was his fault. He knew it as deeply as he knew anything. He’d known it all along. Everyone had teased her. But
he
was the reason Sasha had leaped.

Now Ty leaned dangerously into the open air above the highway. He wouldn’t lose her, too. He couldn’t. He had no choice but to climb the railing himself, to meet her where she
was and coax her back to solid ground. The snow made the metal slick. He felt whooshes of wind every time a car barreled past below them. He could barely keep his grip; his fingers were too cold. There was only about a foot between the railing and the end of the ledge.

With the snow falling down around him, stinging his eyes and blinding him, Chase could barely see Ty. It was impossible to differentiate her face from Sasha’s. His center of gravity seemed to be in his throat.

“Please, Sasha—Ty—I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t care. Just come down to the ground with me, okay? We’ll forget any of this ever happened.”

Her voice sailed out into the wind. “I just want one kiss,” Ty cried out.

“Wh—what?” Chase was shuffling toward her, closer, along the narrow ledge. The wind vibrated through his body. Below them, a truck thundered through the pass.

Ty turned to him. He thought he saw tears streaming down her face. “Please kiss me,” she said.

“If I do, will you stop this?” His legs were shaking. His fingers were so cold he could hardly feel the railing.

“It will stop,” she said, and now her eyes were dark pools. “I promise.”

They were just a few inches apart. He leaned forward, and then they were kissing. It was more intense than their first kiss.
He felt waves of electricity pulsing through his body, hot and cold alternately rolling through him. He stopped thinking. He took one hand off the railing and reached out to grab the back of her neck, pulling her closer. She resisted for just a second, pulling away.

“I’m so sorry,” he breathed.

As he inhaled again, he felt something in his mouth. Like when he woke up from the dream with a tickle on his tongue, except this was like a mouthful of feathers, not a single plume. He coughed, and the convulsive action made him almost lose his footing. He gagged again, spitting. And out of his mouth, into his palm, came a red orchid.

At that moment, with the most clarity he’d ever felt in his life, Chase realized two things.

The first was that Ty was not standing on ground. Not even her toes were touching the cold concrete of the overpass. She was hovering before him, in midair.

The second thing, this one even more shocking than the first: Ty was not beautiful at all. Her body was transparent—gray, papery—and he could practically see through it. Her hair looked singed. Her lips looked black; her eyes were twin holes.

“Sometimes sorry isn’t enough,” she whispered. Her face was calm again. Like a black sea at night—with everything lurking beneath.

He gasped. He tried to shift away from her, but he didn’t
know where to put his feet, the ledge was so narrow. He stumbled and his shin bashed against the bottom of the railing.

He tried to croak out a question—
who are you, what are you?
—but nothing came from his mouth as he moved it.

Then she blew him a kiss—it was the smallest, softest puff. But it was enough to send him reeling backward.

It was then that Chase had his third and final crystalline realization: He was no longer holding on to the railing. He was plummeting toward the highway below.

He thought one last word.

Sasha.

Penitence, or The Wrath of the Furies

There was a very small memorial service, one that felt cursory and fake, like people were avoiding talking about what really happened and what really mattered. Em left early. Everything about Chase’s death and its aftermath felt wrong. She skipped the school assembly that had been called at the last minute to talk about students’ emotional reactions to Chase’s fatal fall and Sasha’s suicide attempt. Grief counselors were available through the guidance office to help students process their feelings.

Em knew they were all trying to do the right thing, but she couldn’t help feeling like all these adults were just as confused as the kids. She wondered if she should tell someone about Ty, about Chase’s infatuation with her, about the mysterious girl who had appeared in Ascension just before everything started to snowball into chaos. She didn’t know who to tell.

Less than a week into the new year, there was a buzz in the air, and it was a drone of death.

She blamed herself, in part. She knew he’d sounded desperate. She’d known, and she hadn’t done everything she could to find him. And now . . . he was gone. She couldn’t stop thinking about that night. What had he been thinking? Since his death, she had replayed his voice mail several times, until hearing his voice started to freak her out and she deleted it impulsively.
Something came up,
he had said.

But what?

Since Chase’s death, she had been having nightmares, most of them plotless, full of dark, swirling shapes. But last night, the nightmare had taken form. She was driving on the snowy road, the same one on which she’d encountered Meg, the girl with the scarlet ribbon. She was headed for the Piss Pass, and past it, Chase’s home. She could see him in the distance, at the end of a tunnel of snow and light and tree branches. He was shouting and waving his arms, and she couldn’t understand him. All she knew was that something was desperately wrong, and she needed to fix it. But just as she got close to him, almost close enough to understand, Meg appeared in front of the car, and she had to slam on the brakes. She skidded to a halt, but the brakes locked, and she went sailing into blackness.

She woke up choking back a scream.

Everyone was saying Chase’s death was a suicide—her parents, teachers, everyone at school. And it seemed like that, sure. But something about that night—Meg’s presence in it, specifically—was haunting Em.